Text from Your Tablet or Browser With MightyText

It’s no secret that I have a lot of devices at my disposal including phones, tablets, computers, and even Google TV. I like that pretty much from any place in my apartment — or office, or coffeeshop I happen to be working at — I can use any of those devices to do things like read, check the weather, or whatever Internet-based task I have to perform. However, when it came to texting I was locked down to using my phone for a long time; all of that changed with MightyText.

MightyText is a cross-platform app that works natively on Android phones and tablets, as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, and as a web-based application. That means you can visit MightyText from your Kindle Fire, PC, Mac, or even your iPad to send texts. Today I’m going to tell you how.

MightyText on Your Phone

The absolutely essential part of this equation is MightyText for your Android Phone. When you install this app, it will ask you to authenticate with your Google login information and associate your phone with your Google Account. This will allow MightyText to synchronize the text messages sent to and from your phone to other devices.

Setting up MightyText on Android.

Once configured, MightyText on the phone doesn’t do much else. It will run in the background and relay texts to other devices.

I suspect MightyText sends your messages to a server first, so if you’re uncomfortable with that, this might not be the solution for you. It is also worth noting that all messages are sent securely over HTTPS.

MightyText in the Browser

This is where the real magic happens. Once a text message is sent to your phone, MightyText will relay it to your browser, where you can read and reply, and even view photos.

Unfortunately, it does not support iPhone mass-texts, so if someone sends a text to multiple people from their iPhone, you will have to use your phone to view it.

I use Chrome as my primary browser so I’ve been using MightyText’s native Chrome extension and it works pretty well, but you’re not limited to Chrome to get all of the features. It includes popup notifications, with settings for how long they stay up, in Chrome, Firefox, and IE — sorry Sarfari users, it’s marked as Coming Soon for you —and the ability to automatically import your Contact list so you have names and photos to go along with numbers, as well as a really cool looking “powerview” interface that allows you to view multiple contact windows at once.

MightyText PowerView

The Chrome extension also allows you to open contacts in new Chrome windows when you click on the popups, so you can keep one or more people up without having to switch to the MightyText tab.

MightyText on a Tablet

The final piece of this puzzle, and the most recent one, is the ability to text from your tablet. MightyText recently released a native tablet app so you have all of the power of the browser extension right on your tablet.

MightyText for Android Tablets

You get a nice, simple interface with your most recent contacts and a list of text messages you’ve sent a received. The app also supports push notifications.

Notifications on Android Tablets

Using MightyText on non-Android Tablets

I know this is an Android site, so that should be my primary focus, but as I mentioned before, you can use a MightyText web-based app on the iPad and Kindle Fire. This will provide the same interface as pictured above for Chrome. For all of the browsers, almost all of the functionality, save for the popups, is performed via a web-based interface. It’s also worth noting that the fine people at MightyText have said they are working on a native app for both the iPad and the Kindle Fire.

Since it’s browser based and works in later versions of IE, I’d imagine it also works on the Surface, but I haven’t personally been able to confirm that.

Conclusion

Cross-platform messaging is something that people have been working on for quite a while. With tools like Google Talk, iMessage, Kik, and more, developers have been trying to find the best way for people to be able to message from a single ID across many devices. I think that MightyText has solved that problem in the best way. You, the user, can text people from any devices you’d like, and the recipients do not need to do anything special in order to receive messages. While there are some kinks to work out, I think as MightyText gains momentum, it will grow into something that can rival iMessage.

Will you start using MightyText now, or do you use an alternative? Let us know in the comments!